GPU Prices Drop Along With Crypto
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(Image credit: AMD)
Bitcoin and Ethereum have hit record lows this week, approaching $30,000 and $2,200 respectively, which is nearly 50% off both crypto coins' highest values, according to CNBC. The slow but steady drop in crypto prices over the past month has in turn started a chain reaction in GPU pricing, as crypto mining becomes less and less feasible. Compared to last month, we're now seeing up to 11% lower card prices on eBay — and that's before the latest crypto losses.
We've compiled one week's worth of pricing data, from late December compared to the past week, showing a complete list of average GPU prices from eBay. We're only looking at the latest AMD and Nvidia graphics cards, though we'll update our GPU prices with the full month of data next week. Swipe to scroll horizontally On average, nearly every graphics card dropped in price by 5% or more, with a few GPUs even breaking into the double digits — the RTX 3090, RTX 3080 (10GB) and RX 6600 all dropped by 10% or more. However, GPU volume (at least on eBay) also dropped substantially for nearly all GPU models, with only the RTX 3090 and RTX 3070 Ti selling more cards in the past week than in late December.
The star of the show goes to AMD's Radeon RX 6600, which tied for the highest price drop of 11.6%, going from $586.89 down to just $518.66. While that doesn't necessarily equate to a great deal, that's arguably the best deal of 2022 in our current GPU market.
For reference, the RX 6600 completes reasonably with Nvidia's RTX 3060 12GB GPU in 1080p gaming performance, coming in just 4% slower (at least in non-ray tracing games). But the RTX 3060 12GB still costs a whopping $705 on eBay, giving the RX 6600 a huge lead in terms of performance per dollar. In fact, the closest Nvidia card you can find for $520-ish is the company's RTX 2060 6GB ($520) or GTX 1660 Super ($480), which are older and slower cards than the RX 6600.
Technically, AMD's Radeon RX 6500 XT is the cheapest current-generation GPU you can buy today, with an average price of just $375.22. However, its lackluster performance and feature set make it a stale buy in comparison to the RX 6600, despite it costing $143 more.
When we flip over to Nvidia's RTX 30-series products, there unfortunately aren't any truly compelling options even after the price drops. The 3070-series and 3060-series cards are only down about 5%, though perhaps lack of mining potential will end up keeping the upcoming RTX 3050 prices in check (fingers crossed).
The RTX 3080 10GB did drop 11.6% in price, the same as the RX 6600. However, with its far higher asking price of $1595, the 11.6% price drop feels mediocre at best. Still, we're happy to see all of Nvidia's graphics cards (with the exception of the RTX 3070 Ti) get decent price cuts as a whole.
There are also a couple of anomalies worth mentioning with the eBay chart trends. The RX 6900 XT increased in price by 3.7% over the past month, despite consumers buying 20% fewer cards. The RTX 3090 trends are also strange considering the card had a 10% price drop but an increase in sales of 7.7%. The same goes for the RTX 3070 Ti which saw a 0.5% price drop but saw a noticeably higher increase in sales by 11.1%. Regardless, if the current cryptocurrency trends continue, combined with increased graphics card production thanks to the waning ABF substrate shortages, we can expect to see prices continue to decline. Join the experts who read Tom's Hardware for the inside track on enthusiast PC tech news — and have for over 25 years. We'll send breaking news and in-depth reviews of CPUs, GPUs, AI, maker hardware and more straight to your inbox. Aaron Klotz is a freelance writer for Tom's Hardware US, covering news topics related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.